Exclusive! Neighbor: It Looked Like Brittany Was Gone By The Time Paramedics Arrived

One of Brittany’s neighbors gives HollywoodLife.com an eyewitness account of what happened the morning the actress died.

Paramedics may have tried to resuscitate Brittany Murphy but according to a neighbor, “It was obvious she was already gone by the time they brought her down from the house,” Claire Staples tells HollywoodLife.com.

Staples, who heard sirens early Sunday, Dec. 20, morning, tell us firefighters got on the scene around 8:30 a.m. and wheeled Brittany, who “looked yellow,” out of her West Hollywood home on a gurney.

A group of firemen and paramedics performed CPR and tried valiantly to save Brittany by manually “sticking tubes down her throat,” Staples said, before going to the truck to use a defibrillator.

Brittany husband, Simon Monjack, was still in his pajamas as he staggered around, though he wasn’t near the body. “He kind of maintained a distance,” Staples tells us.

Brittany’s body is still at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the local hospital where she was pronounced dead at 10:04 a.m., L.A. County Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter confirms to HollywoodLife.com. “I’m here for a general investigation,” added Winters.